All posts tagged ‘Annoying Habits’

You may have seen a funny infographic about geek love making the rounds. It ends with a list of “10 Telling Signs You Live With a Geek,” or something very like that (I’ve seen at least two versions of it). I really like the list; I should, because I created it.

In its original incarnation, which the infographic’s creators had the chutzpah to pitch to me, they hadn’t even bothered to rewrite the text I’d written on the original list. On the latest version I’ve seen, at least they’ve altered the wording somewhat — however, the ordering of the list and the content of each item are still clearly copied from my original piece. To be fair, they did include the URL of my article in the “sources” list at the article’s end, but there’s a distinct difference between drawing inspiration from a source and plagiarism. I don’t want to link to the infographic, because I don’t want to provide its creators with any more page views. If enough people can’t find it, I may post a link in the comments, where at least it won’t benefit their SEO.

Anyway, my piece can be found here, where it was originally published on March 13, 2009. I’ve also reproduced it in its entirety below. Note the reference to Battlestar Galactica being “about to end,” which I’ve (obviously) kept in from the original.

Everyone has annoying habits, and a sizable part of every successful marriage is learning to live with those things each other does that annoy you. I think it’s safe to say, too, that geeks have some habits that we think are awesome, but that non-geeks find a little…less awesome.

Now my wife is a geek, but she’s not as much of a geek as I am, so I asked her for some help putting together a list of ten things geeks do that annoy their spouses. She was perhaps a little too enthusiastic about helping out, but here are the results:

1. Punning – I remember when I was young, and thought that I must be the only geek (well, possibly nerd at that point) who loved to pun. Then I went to my first science fiction convention, and quickly learned that not only was I wrong, but that there were plenty of far worse offenders than I. That gave me something to aspire to, of course, which I did for a while. Since college, I’ve scaled back on the relentless punning I used to practice, but I’m sure I’ll never quit completely.

2. Using “frak,” or Klingon, or both, instead of regular swear words – Yes, this is a marvelous way to avoid accidentally using real, English swear words in front of the kids. I suspect that’s one of the reasons it can be annoying to others, though: it’s like a loophole in the no-swearing-in-front-of-the-kids rule. I caught my wife using “frak” the other day, now that she’s gotten into Battlestar Galactica, too (yes, just as it’s about to end), but she claims to have done that just to make me smile and says it still annoys her when I do it. Still, I figure she’d be more annoyed by my using real swear words, so I think I’ll stick with it.

3. Weird or over-the-top ways of celebrating mainstream holidays – Geeks rarely do anything by halves, as anyone who’s ever been to a costume contest at a major sci-fi convention can attest. So if we want to celebrate something we’re likely to go all-out. This can mean going to great lengths with Halloween decorations, or, as I’ve done several times, making tentative plans to serve rabbit for Easter dinner and venison for Christmas dinner (yes, I know, reindeer are caribou, but it’s close enough). No, I’ve never carried through on these threats plans, but when the kids are old enough not to be upset by the joke I might just. I do insist on playing Tom Lehrer’s Christmas Carol at least once each December.

4. Dissecting movies – Geeks, in my experience (and myself included), have a habit of picking movies apart, particularly just after watching them. We will discuss everything from the special effects to the minutiae of costume and prop design, but what gives us the most pleasure is identifying plot holes (no matter how small), anachronisms, and goofs in general, and, in adaptations, picking apart the cuts and modifications. For some reason, this tends to annoy non-geeks who, I guess, don’t enjoy the process.

5. Wearing obscurely geeky T-shirts to “normal” places – Every geek has at least a few of these; don’t try to deny it. We love them, because we get the jokes and we know that only other geeks will get them, too. Unfortunately, they can make our less geeky significant others feel a bit conspicuous when out with us—or maybe they feel the geekiness will rub off on them, I’m not quite sure. Still, I feel that if I have to occasionally let my daughter wear a Hello Kitty shirt out of the house, I can wear my shirts from ThinkGeek.